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Professor Penelhum on the Resurrection of the Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Young
Robert Young
Affiliation:
Senior Fellow of the University of Wales, University College, Cardiff
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Extract

In his recent book, Survival and Disembodied Existence Terence Penelhum presents a convincing case against the belief in disembodied personal survival. His formidable attack constitutes, I think, one of the strongest cases that has yet been made out against such a belief. I am in substantial agreement with his position.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 181 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 181 note 1 London, 1970.

page 181 note 2 ‘Personal Identity, Memory and Survival’, Journal of Philosophy, 1959 pp. 882–903Google Scholar; ‘Personal Identity’ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edwards, P., New York, 1967, Vol. 6 pp. 95–107.Google Scholar

page 181 note 3 The approach in question is more fully defended in my, ‘The Resurrection of the Body’, Sophia, July 1970, pp. 1–15Google Scholar esp. section vii. It is of some significance that our assessments were arrived at independently.

page 181 note 4 Since originally considering this approach I have recalled Quire's valuable discussion of the related idea of river-stages in his ‘Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis’, reprinted in From a Logical Point of View, New York and Evanston, 1961.Google Scholar

page 182 note 1 A point which Locke saw clearly in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, ch. 27. Cf. also Penelhum's, ‘Personal Identity’, op. cit., p. 96.

page 183 note 1 Survival and Disembodied Existence, op. cit., p. 97 (Penelhum's italics).

page 185 note 1 In his ‘Personal Identity’, op, cit. p. 96. Penelhum recognises this fact, for he discusses what he callc ‘the incompleteness of the concept of identity’. Reference, in other words, must be made to a common underlying sortal condition being satisfied, if an identity statement is to be true. Cf. Wiggins, D., Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity, Oxford, 1967Google Scholar esp. Part II, and Shoemaker, S., ‘Wiggins on Identity’, The Philosophical Review, 1970, pp. 532 ff.Google Scholar

page 185 note 2 ‘The Resurrection of the Body, op. cit., esp. pp. 12 ff.

page 186 note 1 The decisions of which Penelhum speaks seem on his own admission to be ‘linguistic’. Cf. Survival and Disembodied Existence, op. cit., pp. 99 f.

page 186 note 2 Hick's, John suggestion in Faith and Knowledge, London, 1967 Ch. 8Google Scholar, that there may be epistemically unambiguous features of resurrection life which would establish beyond reasonable doubt that the Christian hope had indeed been consummated, would afford retrospective support and, perhaps, confirmation for this prospective explanation.